Love sucks. Everyone knows it. It never lasts, you are in hell the entire time you are in it for fear it will end, and when it inevitably does, you are in pain and hurt and angry and feel like a fool for risking your heart.
That is, if you are fool enough to really give it completely. It’s a scary thing to completely open up to someone you hardly know -because usually you fall for someone you have just met, you rarely fall for old friends or aquaintences. And if you do show spill your guys, you give up emotions and feelings and information that can be used against you with great effect later should you break up.
A lot of things that pass between lovers wouldn’t be understood or fairly treated amongst your friends and neighbors and those who wish you ill. Nothing is more deliciously vengeful than spilling those inside facts on an ex-lover. Personally, I find myself holding back. I don’t want my foibles and dreams and failings thrown up in my face in a fight or in a break-up. And complete openness and honesty can cause discomfort and embarrassment in your partner instead of engender trust. If you admit to your new love the history of your infidelities, they may assume you will do the same to them. And you might, but you don’t want them thinking you might.
If you give them the gory details of why you and your last sig other broke up, you may find these short-comings called up in a quarrel with the famous line: “Now I see why ____ broke up you!”. Besides, if you admit being dumped, you present yourself as discarded goods. Noone wants what someone else threw away. If you tell how you dumped an ex-lover, then your new love may feel insecure with you, for fear you may tire of them and consign them to the trashheap of old flames.
And its not only that. If you really fall in love, I mean completely give your entire heart and soul, you risk real pain and misery, and the upset of your entire life. The more you base your future dreams and hopes and plan your life around another person, the harder you will crash when everything you have built on comes crashing down on you. The betrayal you feel for all the times they said they loved you. The anger you feel for all the times you voiced concern there may be trouble in the relationship, and they brushed away your fears, or even accused you of doubting the sincerity of their love.
And worst, more painful of all, is the real, intrisic, chemical, physical pain, the tightening and ache in your chest, the constriction of your very heart. You can think of nothing but terrible sadness and the feeling of your heart just tearing away. You wake up sick inside, and immediately remember why. The misery of thinking of the days and weeks stretching ahead without her (this is written from a guy’s point of view, women may transpose the appropriate pronoun) makes the future seem gray and worthless. And as those days progress, the terrible yearning for them, the ache of missing them, wears you down. You lose sleep, you can’t eat. Your work suffers and you feel no pleasure in anything. You just have to feel this way until you don’t feel this way anymore.
You can handle it in one of several ways. If you have an ounce of self-respect, you don’t call them. You don’t go where they may be found, you don’t ask friends about them, you try to just get on with life and get over them as soon as possible. This is the best and quickest way to ease the pain.
But its hard. More often than not, you will call. You will lay a guilt trip on them. You will go where you think you might cross paths with them and see them. This risks seeing your ex-girl with another guy, which leads to a whole new set of mental images for your nightly torture, but sometimes it works. Your whining or begging or just plain pathetic hanging on may buy you some time and maybe a partial reconciliation.
But now the girl will have lost all respect she once had for you. And she holds the power position. Any tiny thing you do to displease her can now be grounds for your final break-up, so you become a sniveling, cringing, begging, obsequious hound. She may be letting you down easy, so she attempts to wean you of her by making plans with other people, and this just makes you all the more needy and clingy. And this has the effect of making her uncomfortable with you even more than before. No girl can stay with a guy she feels pity, then contempt for. You may drag it out, but eventually you will find out, or be told straight out, she is fucking someone else and its totally, completely, irrevocably over.
Everybody goes through one of these, at least. Hopefully we learn from it. If, you do have that hopeless, lingering desire to rekindle a romance with the prick/cunt who has torn your heart out, walking away may actually bring them back. They may test the dating waters and find the outside world cold and cruel, which it is. They may remember fondly the warmth and comfort of having someone who loved them so completely and unquestioningly. And they may come back. Here’s your second test. And it takes a great deal of balls (or ovaries). You will never be secure with them again. Walk the fuck away again, and savor the flavor of your self-respect.
But we rarely have the will to fight the ache in our breasts. God, it controls us, and its an evil thing. Love kills, never doubt it.
Sorry, not too funny this week.